Revised Sociosexual Orientation Inventory
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Lars Penke,1 University of Edinburgh
The construct of sociosexuality or sociosexual orientation captures individual
differences in the tendency to have casual, uncommitted sexual relationships.
The term was introduced by Alfred Kinsey, who used it to describe the
individual differences in sexual permissiveness and promiscuity that he found
in his groundbreaking survey studies on sexual behavior (Kinsey, Pomeroy, &
Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953). The amount of
scientific research on sociosexuality increased markedly when Simpson and
Gangestad (1991) published the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI), a 7item self-report questionnaire that assesses sociosexual orientations along a
single dimension from restricted (indicating a tendency to have sex
exclusively in emotionally close and committed relationships) to unrestricted
(indicating a tendency for sexual relationships with low commitment and
investment, often after short periods of acquaintance and with changing
partners). On average, men tend to be more unrestricted than women in their
1
Address correspondence to Lars Penke, Centre for Cognitive Aging and
Cognitive Epidemiology, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh,
7 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, UK; e-mail: lars.penke@ed.ac.uk
sociosexual orientations, though there are also large individual differences
within both sexes (Schmitt, 2005). The SOI has been successfully applied in
over 50 published studies from fields as diverse as social, personality, and
evolutionary psychology, sexuality research, gender studies, biological
anthropology, and cross-cultural research (Simpson, Wilson, & Winterheld,
2004).
Despite its popularity, the SOI has repeatedly been criticized (Asendorpf
& Penke, 2005; Penke & Asendorpf, 2008; Townsend, Kline, & Wasserman,
1995; Voracek, 2005; Webster & Bryan, 2007). Conceptually, it has been
doubted that a single unitary dimension accurately reflects individual
differences in sociosexuality. Psychometrically, the SOI has received criticism
for its sometimes low internal consistency, multifactorial structure, skewed
score distribution, open response items that invite exaggerated responses,
multiple alternative scoring methods that yield incoherent results, and the
formulation of one item (number 4) that makes the SOI inappropriate for
singles. The Revised Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-R) is a 9-item
self-report questionnaire that was developed to fix all these issues (Penke &
Asendorpf, 2008). It assesses three facets of sociosexuality: Past Behavior in
terms of number casual and changing sex partners, the explicit Attitude
towards uncommitted sex, and sexual Desire for people with whom no
romantic relationship exists.
Description
The SOI-R consists of nine items, three for each of the three facets. All are
answered on rating scales. The first two items of the Behavior facet are taken
from the original SOI. They ask for the number of sexual partners in the last
12 months and the lifetime number of “one night stands.” The third
behavioural item assesses the number of partners with whom one had sex
despite a lack of long-term relationship interest. Similarly, the first two
Attitude items (asking for acceptance of sex without love and for comfort with
casual sex) are identical with two items from the SOI, whereas a new item
(asking for requiring the prospect of a long-term relationship before
consenting to sex) replaces an SOI attitude item with overly long and
complicated text. Finally, three new items assess the Desire facet, which was
not very well represented in the original SOI (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008).
They ask for the frequency with which one experiences spontaneous sexual
fantasies or sexual arousal when encountering people in everyday life with
whom no committed romantic relationship exists.
In a series of studies, the SOI-R items were chosen from a pool of 47
items using exploratory factor analysis and item analysis (Penke, 2006).
Confirmatory factor analysis supported that they represent distinctive facets of
sociosexuality with low to moderate positive intercorrelations (.17 to .55). The
correlation between the Attitude and Behavior facets was significantly larger
in women than in men, but otherwise the factorial structure is invariant
between the sexes, showing that the SOI-R is equally appropriate for men and
women (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008).
An analysis of 8,522 participants from an online study indicates that the
SOI-R is appropriate for individuals of any normal-range educational level,
including hetero-, bi- and homosexuals, singles and individuals of any
relationship/marital status, and at least the age range of 18 to 60 years (Penke,
2006; data partly available on www.larspenke.eu/soi-r/). However, some
facets do not work very well for sexually inexperienced and asexual
individuals.
Additional material pertaining to this scale, including information about
format, scoring, reliability, and validity is available in Fisher, Davis, Yarber,
and Davis (2010).
Fisher, T. D., Davis, C. M., Yarber, W. L., & Davis, S. L. (2010). Handbook
of Sexuality-Related Measures. New York: Routledge.